Suspended in My Insecticide Jar

In Suspended in My Insecticide Jar by Clara McAuley, poems emerge through the lens of a queer teen in today's world touching on themes including suicide, sexuality and body dysmorphia.



"They do not write our happy endings. Tragedy is easier to sell", says Clara McAuley in her poem, They Like to Kill Us Off. The determination to be the author of her own literal and figurative narrative is an impelling force behind the visceral and nuanced collection of poems that is Suspended in My Insecticide Jar. Beautifully wrought, with the delicacy of the myriad moths that dance within and between the poems, McAuley brings transparency and urgency to experiences with mental health, body dysmorphia and disordered eating. In doing so, the author often brings focus to the stomach, subtly invoking the solar plexus chakra, associated with strength and inner power-an appropriate invocation because such are the qualities of her writing and the burning question, "if we were moths, to what light would we be drawn?"

-Zachary Kluckman, author of Rearview Funhouse & Some of It is Muscle, Founder of MindWell Poetry